


Tread Softly

by kesomon



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Apologies, Companions Meet Companions (Doctor Who), Episode: s03e10 Blink, Episode: s10e01 The Pilot, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Martha Jones deserved better, Mentioned Billy Shipton, Mentioned Clara Oswin Oswald, Mentioned Rose Tyler
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-04-05 21:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: When walking in the past, tread softly. There are butterflies afoot.Following up strange energy readings at the request of UNIT, Martha and Mickey investigate the campus of St. Luke's University, circa 2018. But Martha has forgotten something important.This isn't her first visit.Trapped in the past by the Weeping Angels in 1969 and on the outs with the Doctor, Martha has a chance meeting with a familiar stranger on the campus of St. Luke's University. And the Doctor has a chance to make something right.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [When You Need Me Most](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17709620) by [Shinyunderwater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinyunderwater/pseuds/Shinyunderwater). 



> This fic is actually a lead-off of [Lessons (past and present, 1855, 1901)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15367125) #4, in which Ten bumps into Nardole but is spared investigating by Martha's return hug. It's Martha's side of the story.
> 
> Possible cw warning: mindwiping, because Twelve of 1969 hasn't had that moment with Bill refusing a mindwipe and knocking sense into his brain yet. Martha consents to it, but it's kinda a do-or-die situation.
> 
> I am playing Fast And Loose with the timeline here, because for my enjoyment purposes, Bill at least knows the Doctor's a time-travelling alien with a mystery in a vault. I am therefore pretending that the TARDIS = Life lecture we got in The Pilot was in fact a lecture that happened AFTER Bill has had her first Doctor adventure. Either that, or the Doctor actually recycles lectures from time to time.
> 
> And shoutout to Shinyunderwater whose fic 'When You Need Me Most' sniped the first-posted position for this same idea, completely unexpected. Kudos to psychic coincidence!
> 
> Fic is mostly finished, only the epilogue to go. Will be posting one chapter every day until I finish said epilogue or run out of chapters.
> 
> No Beta we die like Daleks - incoherently screaming and shooting everything with laser guns.

_2018_

_“Time! Time doesn't pass. The passage of time is an illusion,_ _  
_ _and life is the magician.”_

UNIT, understaffed, dealing with the in-house backlash of a recent incident involving the Zygons. Torchwood, disbanded to America and Jack Harkness off-planet. Sarah-Jane Smith, on a well-deserved vacation to New Zealand alongside Jo Grant and their respective families.

Potential planet-threatening emergencies never asked if it was your day off.

And so, when odd energy readings cropped up on the campus at St. Luke’s University, it was left to Martha and Mickey to investigate at UNIT’s request.

“Last time I investigated a school it was a bit more kiddie than this,” Mickey commented, looking around the grounds as they walked. “And fighting bat-people who really, really liked chips. Is it wrong that I feel nostalgic about that?”

“Well we did just pass the cafeteria,” Martha pointed out. “We’ll grab something before we go. Argh!” She shook the scanner in her hand. “I can’t get a fix on a direction, but I think it’s picking something up. Damn static.”

“Give it here, then?” Mickey took the device and fiddled with it. “Blinkered tech boys, giving us the experimental stuff they’ve reverse-engineered. If there’s one thing I miss about the other-world Torchwood, it’s the gadgets that worked right and being less of being a guinea pig for UNIT.”

_“Because life only lets you see one day at a time.”_

Martha frowned, half-listening to her husband, as she gazed around the campus. There was a nagging feeling in the back of her mind, like something she’d forgotten, something she’d missed.

“Come on,” she said, and grabbed Mickey’s hand, tugging him towards the building marked as Lambert Hall on the campus map. He blinked, slipping the malfunctioning scanner into a pocket as he caught up.

“What’s up, babe?”

“I’m not sure, it’s like...” she trailed off, looking in through open doors to empty rooms, following some instinct she couldn’t describe. “I feel like I’ve...been here before. But it’s like a dream, like I put the stove on and only just remembered.”

“Hope not,” Mickey joked, “We won’t be home for another few days, I’d hate to see the flat burn down.” But his face was serious as he joined her searching.

_“You remember being alive yesterday,_   
_you hope you're going to be alive tomorrow,_   
_so it feels like you're travelling from one to the other._   
_But nobody's moving anywhere.”_

Ever since Martha had told him of the Year That Never Was, Mickey had trusted her gut feelings when they came. The UNIT examiners had suggested that being trapped at the centre of such a massive paradox had left Martha with what could be called a rudimentary time sense. She was rarely wrong about her hunches, and the further into the building they went, that feeling grew, until she stopped, staring at the door to a lecture hall.

_“Movies don't really move. They're just pictures, lots and lots of pictures._   
_All of them still, none of them moving. Just frozen moments._   
_But if you experience those pictures one after the other,_   
_then everything comes alive.”_

“Here.”

The scanner in Mickey’s pocket beeped, and he reached inside, pulled it out, and read it. Then he showed it to his wife.

“I think this is the right place.” The readings were clearly spiked, for whatever it was picking up.

That jolt of adrenaline, that rush of excitement at the unknown. It never quite got old. Martha shared a grin with her husband, and opened the door, the both of them slipping into the back of the lecture hall.

 _“Imagine if time all happened at once._ _  
_ _Every moment of your life laid out around you like a city.”_

The hall was packed, tiered seating around a podium and stage below, where a professor stood before the blackboards. He was a man fully in his element as he spoke, hands flowing to punctuate his message, whimsical and serious in tone all at once.

_“Streets full of buildings made of days._   
_The day you were born, the day you die._   
_The day you fall in love, the day that love ends.”_

“Hi, sorry,” Martha murmured to the young woman next to her, as they squeezed into the last available seats. She smiled at them, shaking her head, which sent the bushy up-do of curls barely tamed by a side-part weave bouncing about.

“Not a problem. The Professor’s lectures are really popular,” the woman murmured back.

“I can tell. What’s the subject?” Martha peered down at the stage.

_“A whole city built from triumph and heartbreak and boredom and laughter and cutting your toenails.  
It's the best place you will ever be.”_

“I think,” the woman said, “that it’s meant to be gravitational physics.” When Martha looked at her, confused, the woman shrugged, with a wondrous grin. “It all makes a scary sort of sense, in the aftermath. Last week he did 30 minutes on poetry and compared it to cosmic radiation. Said it’s all the same because they both rhyme.”

The woman looked back down at the lecture, where the professor had turned, chalk to the blackboard, writing out an equation that Martha could not begin to comprehend.

And yet, that nagging sensation grew stronger.

“ _Time,_ is a structure, relative to ourselves.”

A forgotten moment, that she couldn’t quite place.

“Time _,_ is the _space_ made by our lives.”

An argument, that she couldn’t quite remember.

“Where we stand, together, _forever.”_

“Oh my god,” Mickey muttered beside her, the shock in his voice clear, and Martha snapped from her thoughts to look at the chalkboard. At the words the professor had written. And then she stifled a gasp, because she _remembered._

“Time And Relative Dimension in Space,” the Doctor said, underlining the last word with flourish and turning to face his audience.

Their eyes locked, and he paused, the faintest of smiles crossing his lips.

“It means _life._ ”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day, because just the one felt lacking.
> 
> Enter: my theory on the convoluted weirdness that is the Weeping Angels locations in space-time. Here goes:
> 
> \- Weeping Angels: Origin point, 51st century. Infest and crash a starship into a temple infested with more angels, and a crack in the wall. Angels are sucked into the crack in the universe.  
> \- Daleks: Origin point, Canary Wharf invasion. Daleks punch a hole between universes, and are sucked into it after. But things can escape from holes, like the Cybermen.  
> \- Daleks Temporal Shift to 1920's. Their presence, already unstable, weakens the barrier. Weeping Angels side-slip from crack in 51st century, fall through the weak point and set up shop in 1920's New York. Eventually become infested enough to zap Amy and Rory, but the resulted paradox leaves them weak.  
> \- Remaining Angels follow TARDIS transmissions on slow path through time to Wester Drumlins. Zap the Doctor back in time. Get frozen forever thanks to Sally Sparrow.
> 
> Birds-eye view means it all makes sense. Planned shenanigans or fantastic coincidence? The world may never know.

_1969_

There was a man watching them from across the orientation hall.

Martha tried to pull her attention back to Billy, who was joking with another prospective student on how he’d never be able to remember his high school history courses. It was an innocuous enough statement that made the other student laugh, but a good reminder to Martha that Billy Shipton, like herself, was as out of place in 1969 as she was.

The only difference, she would be able to go home, eventually. Hopefully.

It was that hope that gave rise to guilt, and guilt that led Martha to volunteer to help show Billy around the campus -- the purpose that brought them to St. Luke’s in the first place. It was guilt that bled to anger, fed up with the Doctor’s almost casual disregard for Billy’s situation. Anger that drove Martha here, after she’d stormed off and warned him not to follow her. And now she felt guilty over that too. It wasn’t the Doctor's fault the Weeping Angels had zapped them all into the past, no more than it was Billy’s.

The man was still staring at them, and Martha found it was increasingly difficult to ignore the way his eyebrows furrowed, gaze intense and dark, face lined in what seemed like a permanent scowl. St. Luke’s was meant to be a progressive campus, else the Doctor wouldn’t have suggested it as a place for Billy to integrate into the past.

But this was 1969, Martha reminded herself. There were always a few bad apples in the barrel.

Racism, her brain unhelpfully supplied, probably tasted like stale sweat socks and half-rotted lemons, without the honey of compassion to cut the sour tang of petty simple-mindedness.

She was so busy wondering _why the heck_ at her own allegory that she didn’t notice the man approach her, until a gruff, Scottish voice spoke, “Excuse me-”

She spun, startled, and found he was equally taken aback by her reaction. He recovered faster, though, straightening his shoulders with a haughty expression. “I couldn’t help but overhear your... _friend_ talking." His mouth contorted in discomfort around the word _friend,_ like it left a bad taste behind.

 _Ugh_.

“Yeah, what’s it to you?” Martha bristled, unwilling to put up with a conservative’s prejudicial mindset. The man blinked at her, eyebrows raising, and he stuck his hands in his pockets in a manner that seemed vaguely familiar.

“Absolutely nothing to me. Only you might want to remind him that The Who didn’t release ‘ _Who’s Next’_ until 1971, and if he wants to keep a lower profile he should remember that.” He cast Billy an admonishing, rueful glance. “Fortunately 1969 isn’t what you’d call a hotbed of temporal changes. Not yet. All that unpolluted potential, makes it a good feeding ground for chrono-parasites like the Weeping Angels.”

Record scratch.

Martha froze.

To quote the Doctor, the Angels had only ever been public knowledge sometime in the 51st century; the ones that had caught them in the gardens of Wester Drumlins had been time-slipped, scavengers that should never have been on Earth to begin with.

The Doctor had been meaning to follow their trail and find where they had breached history - somewhere in the vicinity of New York had been his initial guess, maybe even exacerbated by the Cult of Skaro’s presence in the 1920’s- but their subsequent stranding in the 60’s had distracted him quite a lot.

The point: _this man_ , standing here in 1969, should not know about the Weeping Angels. Or be using words like ‘temporal change’ and ‘chrono-parasites.’ Or know anything about a band’s musical releases some 2 years before they even dreamed a chord.

In fact, the only person Martha heard spout that kind of technobabble was the Doctor, and he was-

...a _time traveller._

A swell of hope ballooned in Martha’s chest.

If there was another time traveller in the vicinity, maybe they didn’t have to be stuck here. Maybe Billy didn’t have to be stuck. Maybe they could get a lift home.

The more rational part of her mind stuck a pin in that balloon with a sharp pop.

Because the man was right; Billy was a talker. And not nearly discrete enough, or self-focused enough, to realise he was letting things slip that he shouldn’t know in 1969. And the man had been watching them for a while, Martha realised, if he’d overheard that much foreknowledge from the former DI.

Also, the same part pointed out, what were the odds that she, a stranded time traveller, would just _happen_ to visit a university where there just _happened_ to live another time traveller in residence, and then have the fortune to bump into him?

Think about it logically, Doctor Jones.

If one hears hoofbeats, one assumes to see a horse, not a zebra.

She scrutinised his appearance with a frown.

Sturdy boots, trousers with a chequered pattern, slightly loose. A dark jumper full of holes through which she could see the white of a t-shirt; it was a clever effect, made it look like a night sky. A velvet jacket, so dark a purple that it was almost black, with a bit of crimson in the lining that was turned up around the hands in his pockets. Well _that_ was no indicator; the 70’s were just around the bend, and fashion trends had to start somewhere. His curly hair was frizzy, wild and fluffed, like it had been blown dry by a windstorm and left uncombed.

Nothing about him quite screamed _out of time_ , so much as gave her the nagging sense of _slightly askew_.

Horses, not zebras. More likely, this was a man who saw, heard, an opportunity and was taking full advantage of it.

The balloon deflated in the face of logic, a sad, shrivelled lump of paranoia and rubber hanging from the ribbon strings of her heart.

So, this arse wanted to play mind-games? Stuff that. She let a healthy amount of disapproving scepticism weigh her words. “And how would you know that? You think like you’re from the future or something? I hate to break it to you, mister, but time travel doesn’t exist.”

“Of course time travel exists.” The man’s eyebrows did an impressive waggle between surprised and stern. “You and I, we’re travelling through time right now.”

He was really sticking to this, Martha realised, unimpressed.

“Quite linearly, of course,” he continued, unconcerned by her glower, “But what is _time,_ anyhow? Time’s just an illusion. Photographs of moments, memories, perceived so quickly that it _feels_ like it’s passing. That’s all.”

“You’re a right optimist, you are.” She folded her arms over her chest, and he looked at her in surprise.

“No, but that’s the _beauty_ of it,” he insisted, waving a hand expansively as if conjuring the words he was weaving; a magician at play. “Imagine time as a city; each building, every floor and room and little cupboard, a construct of your days that have been and will be to come. Imagine how much _time_ you can fill, just by _being_. Time’s just a structure, relative to ourselves; it’s the space made by our lives, a dimension etched into the fabric of reality. It’s _life._  Hm,” he finished with a distracted mutter, “I’ve got to remember that for later.”

Martha shuffled uncomfortably, struck by a nagging sense of Deja Vu that she couldn’t quite place. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Mm. Think about it. It’ll come to you. In the meantime, _tea_ ,” he exclaimed abruptly. “I’m...told I need to be more polite. And you deserve less of the...non-politeness. I’m sorry. I’m not used to dealing with...this.”

“I’m sorry?” What did he mean by ‘this’?

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” the man repeated with a frustrated look. “Didn’t you listen? Tea, in my office. I invite you in. Like a vampire; only you’re far more pleasant company, and I’ve met a few vampires in my time; _horrible_ table manners.”

Martha laughed shortly in disbelief. “And what makes you think I’m going anywhere with _you_? For all I know you’re a nutter who’s gonna kidnap me. Or worse.” Her nose wrinkled at the thought.

The same thought must’ve crossed his mind, for he looked proper horrified for a moment. “I would _never._ ”

“Just the sort of thing a rando kidnapper would say,” Martha retorted, and for a moment they glared at each-other.

The man was first to break. A grin overtook his face, toothy and genuine, fondness softening the lines of his face. It transformed his whole demeanour, the grumpy old man fading to be replaced by something that reminded Martha of a favourite uncle or grandparent, one who would sneak you sweets behind your parent’s back.

“You didn’t take this much convincing the last time, Martha Jones.” He harrumphed, looking almost proud. “Good. You’re learning. Never leave home with a madman in a box just because he winks at you.”

Shock struck for the second time that day. “How do you know my name?”

There. Hesitation, just for a moment. “I...overheard it.”

“I’ve been introducing myself as Martha Kent.” The Doctor had been _very_ adamant about not making an impact on the past. Something about three lifetimes converging and a paradox the size of Manchester.

“Ah. Well.” The man floundered, and then glared at a nearby faculty member who was giving them a very odd look. The faculty moved off, suitable intimidated. It spurred the man into a decision, and he turned away. “Not here. The walls have ears - and possibly teeth, I haven’t looked into it.”

Martha glanced back at Billy. “But-”

“Leave the smiley one, he’ll be fine. They usually are,” the man dismissed over his shoulder.

It was against her better instincts...but her curiosity had been sparked, just as sure as trailing a man to an alley and finding the universe inside a little blue box.

Martha came to her own decision, and followed.


	3. Chapter 3

Following the man led Martha to a door.

There was nothing particularly special about the door; it was identical to every other door in the hall, which was slightly disconcerting. The sole difference was a small plaque bolted at average eye-level, scuffed bronze, that read in etched letters, ‘No visitors without appointments,’ and below that, in what seemed suspiciously like sharpie, ‘solicitors will be shouted at.’

Just above that was a nameplate. ‘Doctor Song, PHD, Theoretical Physics.’

“You’re a teacher here?” Martha wasn’t sure why she was surprised. The man’s wardrobe practically screamed _eccentric professor_ , now that she thought about it.

“And why not?” the man defended, turning a key in the lock. “I happen to be a fantastic teacher.”

Someone had taken a penknife to the word ‘Theoretical’ in clear disagreement; beneath the scratches and scrapes, it now read, ‘Th--re--c-l’, and ‘Physics’ had been scratch-underlined quite a few times.

He paused, noticed what Martha was looking at, and made a derisive snort. “Ah. Don’t pay any attention to _that._ Nothing, _theoretical,”_ Scot’s accent rolling over the vowels with impressive disdain, “about anything I teach. It’s all relative to _somebody._ ”

He ushered Martha into the chambers, still muttering. “Pudding brains, the lot of them. Mind you, there’s always one or two promising -- ah, here we are. Come in, make yourself at home. I’ll just...find where he keeps the tea set. Always moving things like I don’t have a system. Nardole!”

As he moved off, shouting for whoever this Nardole person was, Martha shut the door behind her, and took in the room without leaving the threshold.

 

It was -- _cluttered_ was putting it politely.

One wall was taken up entirely by bookshelves, so high there was even one of those rolling ladders attached. More shelves around the room held artefacts and tchotchkes of such number it was a wonder the shelves hadn't collapsed. What little wall there was to spare held paintings and maps and photographs; some of them Martha recognised, while some were entirely unknown.

There was a record player near the window, a crate of vinyls at its side, and a bench table nearby that held an assortment of flasks, beakers, and other chemistry equipment that felt incongruous with the rest of the room. A small loft-ledge above that held a high-backed, plush armchair, the table next to it all but groaning under the weight of a reading lamp and a pile of books.

In the centre of the room, a massive oak desk took up the main space, as cluttered as the rest of the room. Picture frames and a pen cup filled with oddly familiar cylindrical objects, a glass sphere on a tripod and a few odd doohickeys filled the space between haphazard piles of papers, some marked in red -- half-finished grading by the look of it.

A comfortable-looking chair sat at the desk. It was positioned to have the best view of the hall door, the massive fireplace (currently unlit), and what must’ve been the doors to a kitchenette or private quarters; Martha could hear her host puttering about with the distinctive clink of dishware behind the gap.

On the other side of the desk was a less-inviting hard-backed seat. Martha thought of the plaque on the door.

Well, she thought, that was one way to discourage visitors.

Plaque or no plaque, Martha Jones was not about to be put on the defence. After a moment’s decision, she took a bold seat in the comfy chair.

Then she slumped further into the cushions with a groan of satisfaction. It was  _ridiculously_  plush.

The look on the professor's face when he returned with a tray of tea things was disappointingly nonreactive. As if he’d expected her to sit where she did.

“Ah, good. Enjoying yourself? I dragged that chair from the anterior storage myself, can’t beat good 33rd century craftsmanship.”

He set the tray down atop one of the piles of grading and passed her a cup filled to the brim, steam wafting from the surface with the scent of citrus and honey. Martha sipped it, cautiously, and found herself surprised yet again.

“This is...exactly how I like it.”

“Is it? I’d hoped I’d remembered right.” He seemed pleased as he took his own cup and started dropping sugar cubes into the dark brew. Martha watched him get up to 6 and winced.

“Look, as fun as it is watching you give yourself diabetes,” she said, setting her cup down with a clink in the saucer, “I think we’ve danced around this enough.”

“You know about the Weeping Angels. You know who I am. You definitely don’t dress right for this year -- and I should know, being _stuck_ here for a month now.” The reminder was a bitter taste on her tongue; she cleansed it with a sip of her drink. “You’ve definitely got some future knowledge in your pocket.”

“You always were perceptive,” he complimented, perching himself on the three-footed bar-stool next to the chemistry set-up. “Anything further to hypothesise?”

“You’re a time traveller, you said so yourself,” Martha said, gaining certainty. “And don’t give me that rubbish about _linear time_ ; I mean, a proper backwards-and-forwards Marty McFly man-in-a-Delorean time traveller.” The amused quirk of his mouth was really somewhat infuriating. She huffed. “Who _are_ you?”

One of those bushy eyebrows quirked over the rim of his teacup. “You mean you haven’t guessed? Martha Jones. You’re much too clever not to have noticed the clues.”

Clues?

 

Martha’s eyes narrowed.

Considered the way he dressed, like an aged-out rock star, when rock and roll hadn’t yet been glamorised in 1969.

The photographs on his desk, definition too sharp and colours too pure to be taken with current technology.

The cover of a vinyl in the basket for a band that hadn’t got started until 1976.

The casual way he referred to the 33rd century (and the chair that was really quite comfortable.)

The way he spoke of Time like a movie one could watch, pause, fast forward or rewind to one’s liking.

Her eyes drifted over his desk again, newly searching, to find a pocket watch hanging in a glass bell.

The casing was what caught her attention.

Loops and swirls, etched in silver, tarnished by age.

But still oh, so, very, _familiar._

 

“That watch.” There was no helping the way her voice rose in shock. “That watch, the designs - I’ve seen that watch before. That’s -" Her eyes snapped up. "Are you a Time Lord?”

The bashful look was all the confirmation she needed.

“But - that’s impossible.” Martha stared at the man - no, _alien,_ hardly able to believe it. “He said - the Doctor said his whole planet was gone. He’s the last, he said.”

“Well, he’s not wrong.” The Time Lord set his cup down and rubbed his palms against the fabric of his trousers, a nervous tic. “And, well, he is. But not in the ways he thinks.”

“What do you mean by that?” Martha turned to look back at the pocket-watch, connecting pieces. “Oh! Did you use a Chameleon Arch? Are you hiding out as human, is that why he wouldn’t know? The Doctor did that, once, but he couldn’t remember who he was. How did you retain your memories?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” the Time Lord commented, not unkindly. “No, I’m not under influence of the Arch. Fully Time Lord, all faculties intact, two hearts and everything.”

“This is _huge_!” Martha jumped up from her chair. “How long have you been here? I’ve got to find the Doctor, let him know-”

“Martha!” The Time Lord moved fast, snagging her arm before she could bolt. “Stop. He _cannot_ know I am here.”

“But _why?”_ Martha demanded, aghast. “Knowing he’s not the last, that would mean so much to him!”

“Because I don’t remember it.”

 

Martha squinted in pure confusion. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

“Oh, how to explain.” The Time Lord released her to drag his hands over his face, again sparking such a familiar note in Martha’s memory. The young woman waited, confusion only growing as the man broke away to mutter to himself.

“It was never this difficult before, I’m out of practice, I don’t...do this, I don’t go _back_ -"

He looked lost, and frustrated, and distracted enough that Martha wondered if he had forgotten she was there at all.

"But _you_. The way I treated you, it...- duty of care. Who said that, I had...”

Finally he shook his head, freed of his rambling, and took up Martha’s hands, slender brown fingers cradled against cool, pale palms.

“You are _owed_ my time, Martha Jones. The SS. Pentillion.” His voice was low and coaxing. “42 minutes, 30 locks, and a living sun burning people alive to take back its stolen heart. Do you remember?”

Even the thought of it made Martha shiver with the adrenaline and terror she’d felt, racing the clock before they fell into the sun. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.” 

“There was a conversation we began, on that ship, that we never finished. When I was burning from the inside, and you were adamant neither of us were going to die.” His smile was rueful. “You were right, of course. You’re often right; I never gave you enough credit for it.”

“No, but, I had that conversation with the _Doctor_ ,” Martha disagreed, and then paused, staring as the man’s smile grew wry. “How would you know any of this?”

Eyes grey as the sea in a storm gazed into hers, undeniable and sincere.

“Because, Martha...I _am_ the Doctor.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter we get a bit of Doctor Jones and the Time Lord Biology discussions we should've gotten in season 3, dagnabit.

_I am the Doctor_.

 _Impossible_.

The conviction of the thought hit like a bolt of lightning in Martha's chest. She wasn't even sure why, or how she could feel so strongly that such a statement was Wrong. Her feet drew her back a step without conscious approval.

“I...don’t understand,” she finally managed out, thoughts whirling with confusion. “How can you be the Doctor? You-”

\-- _look nothing like him_ , she didn’t say, but the evidence was _there_ , in words and mannerisms. Even as her knee-jerk reaction faded, her mind was already working. Remembering. All those moments of Deja Vu, almost from the moment he'd spoken to her. Familiar details, nagging at her subconscious.

Echoes, of the Time Lord she had abandoned in anger earlier in the day.

She’d only been ignoring it, because it didn’t make _sense._

"Boggles the mind, doesn't it? Try doing it from my perspective." Her host's mouth quirked at the corner as he backed off, almost to the window, hands in his pockets. 

Giving her space to process.

"It's called regeneration," he supplied. "And I wish I'd told you sooner, when I was Pinstripes and Sandshoes. Would've made a couple moments a lot less awkward, really."

Martha opened, then shut her mouth, and shook her head. "I still don't -- Explain it. How can you go from looking like... _him_ , to..." she waved a hand, helpless. "It should be biologically impossible."

"Hmm. Maybe for a human," he sniffed. “Time Lords, we're a bit different, you know. Two hearts, respiratory bypass, a very efficient brain configuration, and a rather...unusual secondary lymphatic system, of a sort. That last bit's important." He picked up an astrolabe from the shelf, spinning its orbits idly. "When a Time Lord’s body is damaged, to a point, they have the ability to trigger a regenerative process on the cellular level; sort of a big, red, reset button, a get-out-of-death-card. Specifically, a massive molecular reconstruction.”

He spun to face her. “Tell me, Doctor Jones, what would that do to the individual undergoing such a procedure?”

“If it’s...a process that affects the body down to the molecular level…" Martha began, slowly warming to the puzzle, "then, in theory, you’d pretty much be able to heal anything. Even regrow parts, if it’s anything close to stem cell therapy....but...the person’s DNA would basically be rewritten in the process.” Her gaze flew up to meet the Time Lord's expectant gaze, eyes wide. “If it's rewriting DNA, then their very appearance and makeup would change. They wouldn’t be the same person at all, not physically or mentally. There’s no telling what would result.”

The Doctor beamed at her with pride. “Well-deduced. Course, it’s a bit dodgy, this process," he amended, "dangerous, even, so ignore any stories you might hear about regenerating in someone’s arms like one of those ridiculous romance novels.”

She was almost afraid to ask. “...Dangerous?”

“Basic physics, Martha. All that fuel, all that changing and shifting, it generates its own energy; it builds up quick, and it doesn’t just vanish when it’s done its job. It needs somewhere to go.

Basic physics. Right. Matter cannot be destroyed, only converted. And for a Time-Lord sized measure of energy-- the young doctor put two and two together and gawked at him.

"You're saying--"

He mimed an explosion with a conspiratory smile.  _Well then._

“Powerful thing, regeneration is. I’ve long hypothesised it might’ve been a Time Lord’s regeneration that lent itself to the phoenix myth, on several different planets. Probably the Corsair’s doing, that old showboat.”

Too many questions, and the Doctor kept right on derailing her thoughts every time she could formulate one. Martha's head was spinning. The Corsair? Another Time Lord? Cellular regeneration on the scale of cheating death? Don't even start back on the secondary lymph system - and how did that relate to energy storage? Were Time Lords like big solar batteries? Were Time Lords  _Kryptonian?_

(...She would blame her brother Leo for that one. Forced to read too many comic books as a kid for bedtime stories. Still, was worth it to see the Doctor's face if she asked it, or not?)

“You’re right about the limb regrowth, by the way.”

(Never mind.)

_"Excuse me?"_

“I grew a hand back, once,” he continued, almost distracted, flexing the limb in question, while the human gathered her wits again. “A bit of a risk as I was nearing the end of the regenerative period -- but, in all fairness I didn’t intend to get into a sword fight wearing borrowed pyjamas. Quite glad it worked.”

Martha sputtered in disbelief. “You... _grew a hand back._ You got a hand cut off with a _sword_ and you just...grew it _back_  -- like a lizard?”

 

The affronted glower that overtook his face was almost comical.

“ _Lizard?_ Lizard! Regeneration isn’t a switch that can be flipped _on and off_ , you know." He harrumphed in offence. "It takes time to build up the energy required. It isn’t a continuous effect where I can go... _chopping_ _bits_ _off_ and regrowing them. _Lizard_ indeed. See if I take you to meet Lady Vastra.”

“Sorry,” Martha said, hastily. “Not a constant thing, got it." She was still brimming with questions, and feeling oddly bolder. "So, if you can regrow a hand back at will -- during this regeneration period -- can you control the change further?”

An eyebrow twitched in contemplation. “I suppose, in theory. Have done, once, though that was a bit of a cheat. I’ve known other Time Lords who were able to control the change to their liking." He was quiet for a moment; his thoughts no doubt on the faces of those long gone. "A...friend of mine, she had finesse enough to try several different faces before settling on one to keep. But it takes meditation and preparation and foreknowledge of the trigger event, and -- well. Most Time Lords were a bit less...danger prone, shall we say?”

He grinned at her, that toothy, mischievous, familiar sight, before falling serious once more.

“It was incredibly lucky circumstances, incurring that injury when I did. If it had happened any later, I’d have been the one-armed Doctor for the rest of that face.”

“What did you look like?” Martha asked, fascinated.

He only smiled at her, amused. “Guess.”

She blinked.

And then she gasped, a short, disbelief-fueled hiccup of a giggle. “Oh, not _my_ Doctor? The face I know?" A cackle of delight. "Oh god, that is so _weird._ ”

The Doctor laughed with her. He had a good laugh, Martha thought, deep and rich and yet a little bit rusty, strained, like it wasn’t something he often did.

Eventually, amusement subsided, and cheek got the better of her.

“...So...what happened to the hand?”

It earned her a satisfyingly baffled stare.

Martha grinned, unrepentant. “I've never had a friend get his hand chopped off before and just shrug it off. Did you have a little funeral?”

“You humans come up with the _strangest_ ideas,” he told her, incredulous and amused -- and did not actually answer the question, Martha noted.

Interesting.

“So,” she said, wrapping the information into a conclusion and presenting it with hesitance. “You _were_ the Doctor. I mean, you regenerated. From the...Doctor I know. And you did it using biology unique to Time Lords. Is this something you can do at any time?” She frowned. "Seems to me there's usually a limit to Deux Ex Machina."

“You know us Time Lords," he said, waving a hand almost dismissively. "We hate to fess up to personal failings. But...you're right. There are limits to regeneration. It isn't always a guarantee, and eventually the strain is too great for us to manage it." Slender fingers fidgeted with a gaudy ring on his right hand, as he met her gaze. “The average Time Lord has enough regenerative energy in our cells that we can trigger the change 12 times. Thirteen lives to live. And if we’re careful, we can do a lot in those lifetimes." His voice dropped to a weary, whispered sigh. "Sometimes too much."

"You're anything but average," Martha said, but with worry. How many times out of those thirteen had he used?

As if reading her mind, the corner of his mouth quirked.

"I've regenerated thrice, since the face you know," he told her. "And more before him -- I don't like to dwell on the past, you know." Grey eyes turned back to her. "But I’m still the Doctor. Regardless of the outcome...or the fashion sense. Which has been hit or miss, really.” He frowned, as if something had just occurred to him. “Although...looking back, I’m not sure I could survive a regeneration while possessed by a living sun. Time Lords are pretty hard to kill...but we're not immortal.”

“I guess I really did save your life,” Martha joked weakly.

“I suppose you did.” He looked back at her, not an ounce of insincerity in his eyes. “Did I ever thank you for that, Martha?”

 

Outside the usual platitudes? No.

 

A lump coiled in Martha’s throat, and to her mortification, her eyes welled.

The sight of her near-tears made the Time Lord’s face do an an awkward contortion, and he reached for a plate that accompanied the tea things. “Custard cream?”

The young doctor let out a wet hiccup of laughter, and took a biscuit. “God, you still don’t know what to do with human emotions.”

“I like to think I’ve gotten a little better at noticing things,” he admitted. “Someone made me flash cards, I think….not sure what happened to them.”

The troubled distraction on his face was as uncomfortable to Martha as her tears were for him, and so she wiped her eyes dry, nibbling the biscuit. He was watching her, old eyes in an older face, so different to the face she knew.

Realisation came to her like a thunderclap.

“Hang on. If you’re the Doctor, and he’s the Doctor, then how are you _here?_ Are you allowed to be in the same place twice? Is this like Back to the Future, where Marty had to cross his own timeline to fix the things he screwed up?”

“While that has happened,” the Doctor said, slow to admit his faults, “crossing my own timeline generally only happens when the fate of the universe is at stake. The TARDIS is supposed to have safeguards to prevent it, else the fabric of the universe weakens and things tend to go.... _wibbly._ ” The word looked like it pained him. “But your TARDIS is in 2009, if I’m not mistaken. Causality is a bit more _elastic.”_ He looked concerned about that. “I should’ve seen this coming, really; stuck here on Earth, in the 60’s; it’s inevitable I run into myself.”

“Stuck?” Latching onto the word, Martha’s heart sank, and so did she, into the comfy chair. “You’re still trapped here?”

If he was trapped in 1969, three whole regenerations later, what had become of Martha?

 _Time doesn’t work like that_ , her mind reminded her, but it was too late to stop the jolt of shock from paling her skin, palms gone clammy and cold.

“Oh,” the Doctor said, surprised, and then softer, in realisation, “Oh. Oh, no, Martha.” He touched her shoulders, reassuring. “I promise you. It’s... _spoilers_ , but - I promise, you will get home. This, my situation, it’s...unrelated.”

“But, you don’t have the TARDIS either.”

“Don’t I?” He smiled at her. “Think about it. Really _think_. There’s something you’ve been missing.”

“Something I’ve...” Martha paused. Her mind jumped back, to the moment they’d met in the orientation hall, and he’d rambled on about time.

_Think about it. It’ll come to you._

“Earlier, you said...time is relative to ourselves, to the space we occupy in this dimension,” she said, slowly. “You said I’d figure it out.”

He was watching her expectantly.

Suddenly, like a light, it came to her. “Time And Relative Dimension In Space. TARDIS. _Oh_ ,” she fumed, as he laughed. “that’s a, a _rubbish_ clue! You know I was never good at pub quizzes! Especially the anagrams.”

“It’s less a clue, and more of a key,” he told her warmly, and he shifted, turning his gaze over his shoulder.

Martha looked past him, and now saw what she had missed: big and blue and quite _obviously_ there, standing sentinel in the corner of the office where previously, her eyes had slid right over.

 

The _TARDIS_.

 

“Oh my- How did you _do_ that?” the young woman marvelled, leaping up to cross the room and press a hand to the wood. It warmed beneath her palm, humming gently in her mind, like a pleased cat’s purr. Her eyes stung with fresh tears. “Oh, I’ve missed you too.”

“The TARDIS has a natural perception filter; it prevents the locals from questioning its presence,” the Time Lord explained, “like a notice-me-not spell, if you like.”

“Very _Harry Potter,_ ” Martha approved, and studied the little sign that was hung lopsided on the handle of the door. It read _out of order_ in a blocky, sharp scrawl. “I didn’t even realise it was here. But it wasn’t invisible?”

“Not invisible, no, but I’ve dialed the filter up a bit, so it’s _very_ inconspicuous.” He came to stand next to her, leaning a shoulder against the wooden frame of the ship. “There’s a lot of traffic on this planet in this era, wouldn’t want anyone getting too curious.”

“It feels quieter,” Martha noticed. Indeed, the presence in her head was muted, much like it had been in 1913.

“Low power mode. Same reasons.” He was watching her, she could feel it. He knew the question before she could even ask it, and she knew the answer he would give.

She had to ask anyway. “Can you take us home?”

Regret passed over his features. “No.”

It didn’t make it sting any less.

“It’s a long story, too long, one I can’t tell you but-” he stopped, and sighed softly. “I made someone a promise, and I have to keep it. I have duties here, and it’s too dangerous for me to leave, even for a moment. No matter how much I wish to.”

She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat, took a deep breath to push down those feelings of rejection and betrayal behind the mask of the professional future-Doctor Jones, purveyor of bad news to worried patients. “Okay.”

“Brave heart, Martha,” he offered, encouraging, “you’ll be home sooner than you know.” But he still looked sad. Martha wondered if it was guilt, or longing, that shadowed his gaze.

“How long are you...how long does this promise you made extend?” She wondered.

The Time Lord made a face, moving off to circuit the room. He came to a halt near his desk, fiddling with the objects in the pen-cup, which to Martha were now recognisably prototype sonic screwdrivers. “Oh, what year is it now? 1969? Time behaves quite strangely on a linear scale, it’s difficult to keep track--”

“Doctor?”

He stilled, hands in the pockets of his velvet coat, and met her eyes, quiet conviction in his gaze.

“For a promise made, a vow taken, to right a wrong, and save a friend…” He inhaled, and smiled, tired and resolved. “I’d say that’s worth waiting one thousand years.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really proud of this chapter. And a bit of a traditional shout-out for our Queen Thirteen at the finish.
> 
> Only two more chapters in the past, and then we return to the present - which is still being written. Ironic poetry - and yet, frustrating as heck.
> 
> Also, a bit of nerd amusement for you: at the time I posted this, I had just finished watching the original BBC Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the number of kudos was 42.

“One _thousand years?_ ”

Martha stared at him, horror warring with disbelief.

“Well, 979, now,” he amended, scratching the back of his neck in another familiar tic.

“That isn’t much better!” She exclaimed. “You’ve been here for 21 years? How are you not climbing the furniture in boredom?”

He snapped his fingers, pointing at her. “That’s a good idea! Perhaps I’ll invent a game of it. ‘The Floor is Lava.’ Would make things very interesting at the faculty meetings.”

“Tell me you won’t include real lava -- wait, no, Doctor!” Exasperated and very nearly distracted by his tangent, Martha gestured to the world outside the windows. “ _How?_ ”

“There’s another you out there going _stir-crazy_ stuck in this time period, after just a _month_ , with _me_. You don’t do domestic, you’ve told me on _repeated_ occasions - very _rudely,_ I might add. But you’re here - teaching! At University!” She couldn’t help the incredulity in her tone. “And apparently have done for twenty years?”

He ducked his head, abashed. “I _am_ sorry for how I behaved to you, back when I was him, you know. I hadn’t yet learned, how to take the world at its pace and just _be_. But it’s been lifetimes for me, Martha Jones, and I’m a good deal older than I was.”

He reached out to pick up one of the photos, brushed a thumb over the intricate carvings on the frame, and then set it down. Martha stole a glance; the photo was of a woman, bushy curls surrounding her face, a smile on her lips like she was in on a joke the viewer couldn’t know.

“And, I had a few...very good teachers. Friends. Family.” His voice dropped, and then rose again, as he looked back at her. “I’ve learned the value of patience, and time. Time isn’t an enemy. It just means life.”

 

Martha wished she understood, but she couldn’t imagine it: the Doctor, her Doctor, so content to be sedate, locked from his TARDIS by his own choice, while in the past his former self was fighting now so hard to get back to it.

And inside her, another, smaller voice in jealous turmoil, still smitten with the man who winked at her and saved her life, who turned up here and now in a new face that was still, frustratingly, able to tug on her heartstrings, telling her again that she wasn’t wanted, wasn’t _needed_ , for him to be happy.

She couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from her voice. “And your life is here?”

“For as long as it needs to be,” he said, a bit of levity injected into his smile. “It’s not so bad. I chose this, Martha. I made that promise. And if what I’m doing here turns out all right…”

For a moment, he looked lighter, hopeful for the future a long ways ahead. Then he caught himself, cleared his throat, and looked to her with buoyant charm. “Well. It’ll be an adventure, to say the least.”

Hot shame for her traitorous emotions flooded Martha’s chest, and she looked down and away to hide the prick of tears in her eyes. A hand on her shoulder, cool and firm, brought it back up again, and met the Doctor’s awkward, compassionate gaze.

“I’m not much of a hugger, in this body,” he said, uncomfortably, “but you look like you need to hide your face. Hugs are a good way to do that.”

A hug was definitely what she needed. She wrapped her arms around his waist, buried her head in his lapel, inhaling the scent of tea and books and that indescribable essence of _time_ that was the same no matter which Doctor she was hugging.

Stiff at first, the Doctor’s body gradually softened into the embrace, laying arms around her shoulders with hesitant delicacy.

“Oh, Martha,” she heard him say with regret, his voice a deep rumble in her ears over the quiet _thup-tha-tha-thup_ of his twin hearts. “I really am bad at this, aren’t I?” The arms tightened to a proper hug. “I’m meant to be apologising to you, not making you cry on me.”

“Not crying,” she muttered, muffled against the velvet of his coat, and pulled back to sniff and wipe away the moisture collected in her lashes. “I’m fine. It just kinda hit me all at once, y’know?”

“A very dear friend of mine once asked me if ‘I’m fine’ was Time Lord for ‘really not fine at all.’ Is it the same translation in English?” The Doctor asked, mildly sardonic. It earned him a light knock on the arm, but the young doctor’s eyes had dried with the distraction, and she stood a bit straighter. He smiled down at her.

“There you are. All better.” He patted her arms and retreated, moving with energy to rummage through the piles of papers on his desk in search of...something, Martha couldn’t guess. One caught his eye and caused his eyebrows to be impressively cross for a moment, before he shoved it to the bottom of the pile.

“Doctor,” Martha started, “can I ask...”

He stopped what he was doing to look up at her.

“...why did you talk to me?”

 

He looked surprised by the question. “Why?”

“Yeah.” The young woman tucked her arms over her chest. “You said yourself, earlier: you don’t go back. It’s been how long? Since you’ve...seen me. You could’ve ignored me, left the orientation room without saying a word. Left me to wonder. So why not?”

He fidgeted, his glance furtive, and then resumed rummaging. “In all honesty, Martha, you’re correct. I should never have approached you at all.” He winced at the hurt expression that flashed over her face, shook his head. “That came out wrong. I mean, I’m meant to be keeping a low profile here. No interference, no interaction, no jaunts or side trips. But when I saw you out there-” He stopped and chuckled ruefully. “I saw something I could fix, out of a million regrets.”

Almost dreading to ask, she stepped closer. “What regrets?”

“I’m not a good man, Martha,” was the answer, the Time Lord’s gaze boring into her soul. “When I met you, it was like bandaging a wound with kiddie plasters. I was too wrapped up in my own selfishness and grief and shock to recognise I was hurting you.” He hung his head slightly. “And I only ever realised it when you left. You chose your own path, out of my shadow - and you were quite right to. But in the process...” A soft sigh. “I’m still not a good man, Martha. But I’m trying to be.”

“Is this about 1913?” Martha asked, confused and not a little worried.

“About 1913, yes,” he muttered. “And 1969. And for things you haven’t done, but will do, and for things that happened that I deeply, deeply regret and would undo, if not for the causal nexus preventing me from interfering in my own timestream.” He chuckled shortly, sharp and sarcastic. “Not that would’ve stopped me a few lifetimes ago. But I’ve learned my lesson, and I was right. I make a very bad god.”

“There’s a story behind those words,” Martha said, brimming with questions, and watched as the Doctor’s face closed off. Just as it had in the slums of New New York, avoiding her questions about Gallifrey until persistence won out.

Martha could be persistent too.

“All right, Doctor,” she decided. “You want to apologise? Then, I have three requests.”

“Oh do you?” An eyebrow raised.

“Yes.” Conviction, as she held herself firm. “First,” a pause, “can I raid the TARDIS medical bay? Woman’s sanitation in this era is _not_ what I’d call bleeding-edge and I have been here a month. No pun intended.”

“Done,” he agreed quickly, looking discomfited by the implications. Martha stifled a grin; men were all the same, no matter what species.

“Second,” she continued, more serious, “I want to hear that story. Not,” she held up a hand, stalling the denial that crossed his face, “not right now. Later. You say I get back to my time eventually? Come find me. Or I’ll find you. A thousand years on Earth, that’s got a bit of overlap.”

“921,” he corrected, but the corner of his mouth turned up. “You drive a difficult bargain, Martha Jones. And the third request?”

Martha picked up the plate of custard creams, and held it out to him. “We sit down and have a proper catch-up. I wanna know what you’ve been up to since we last met, from your perspective.”

The Doctor smiled and took a biscuit, and then used it to point at her with abrupt warning. “No spoilers. I can’t give you anything about events in your future.”

“Right,” she agreed.

“Right,” he echoed, and took a bite of custard creme to seal the deal.

 

The face he made was utter comedy.

“Oh, that is _disgusting_ , what on Earth - you lot really live off this stuff? It’s just sugar and paste!”

Martha laughed until her sides ached.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short chapter this update, trying to drag it out while I struggle through the epilogue. It's a big gator, it's fightin' me.

It was curious how time could act, when one had good atmosphere, good food, and good company. It seemed like eternity that they sat there, trading stories and conversation, and yet Martha was surprised when she looked up at the clock and found 2 whole hours had passed since they’d sat down together.

“Is that really the time?” she said, dismayed. “It feels like it’s been barely five minutes.”

“Ah, that’s the nature of it,” the Doctor said, surreptitiously brushing crumbs from his coat - for all he complained about human junk food, he could certainly put away as many biscuits as Martha’s toddler-age niece. “There’s never enough time to spare when you want it, and always too much when you don’t. It’s all relative, as I once told Albert.”

“You never did.”

“Well, maybe not,” his mouth quirked, “but the man certainly had good taste in hairstyles.”

Martha glanced up, did a quick mental comparison, came up with an image of a couple of penguin chicks -- rumpled, downy, gray, and squabbling over whether the fish they were going to eat had a concept of Life, The Universe, and Everything -- and snorted with laughter.

“I still can’t get over you being a teacher,” she told him. “Let alone staying still for long enough to hold a job.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Don’t you ever...I dunno. Get the itch to go somewhere?”

The eyebrow arched higher. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were fishing, Martha Jones.”

“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “Why a teacher, though?”

“Why not?” He marked off another paper, and then pushed the pile aside to lace his fingers over his stomach, elbows akimbo on the armrests. “Molding new minds with proper academia, repair some of the damage your ham-fisted higher-ups will have done to the educational system, making sure there’s a few less pudding-brains controlling the future of the human race -- sounds right up my alley.”

“Isn’t that interfering with history, though?”

“Only if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he replied loftily, and of course, _Time Lord,_ he probably would be the best person to know. Still, it felt like there was some piece missing from the puzzle. Some reason why he chose _teaching,_ of all things, when he could’ve done his molding-of-minds in more, dare she think it, _Doctor-ish_ avenues.

Martha opened her mouth, brimming with questions.

She never got the chance to ask them.

The door _banged_ open.

It was loud enough that both the Doctor and Martha jumped; hard enough that the force of it rattled the shelves.

A portly, bald man in a maroon overcoat rushed through, slammed the door shut, and braced himself against it like they were being invaded by Judoon.

Or maybe Beatles fans.

“SIR!” He shouted, in a panicked, high voice, “Sir, we have A _Situation!_ ”

There was a brief moment of silence.

“Nardole,” the Doctor sighed with heavy exasperation. “We’ve had the discussion about _knocking_.”

 

Oh, _this_ was Nardole, Martha noted. The one who moved things around in the Time Lord’s carefully curated chaos of an office.

Like the small but heavy lamp table he was currently dragging in front of the door.

“Is he barricading the door?” Martha blurted in disbelief, thankfully under her breath. The Doctor was the only one to hear her, and he sighed again, three fingers pressed to his temple in the universal sign of a headache.

“Nardole is...Nardole. Always a few screws loose, I’m afraid; never did find them all when I reconfigured him.” That earned him a sideways glance, at which the Time Lord tilted his head. “Android, cyborg. Mutual...” he made a complicated face. “Something or other.”

“Friend?” Martha ventured.

The complicated face increased. “Let’s not go there.”

Whatever Nardole was, Martha observed, he was at least dressed in...relatively contemporary fashion, if not questionable colour choices. He was also muttering frantically, pale and anxious, and yet showed no signs of breathlessness or sweat that Martha would see in a human experiencing the level of panic he was displaying.

Android, the Doctor’d said. Non-human. Right.

Having never met a cyborg, or android, or whatever he was, she could only compare her observations to current prosthesis technology. There was no limitation of motion or stiffness of the limbs; he looked like a strange yet utterly normal human being.

The doctor in Martha was fascinated.

The man finished barring the door and breathed a sigh of relief, turning about -- a relief that was short-lived upon seeing Martha.

He startled, badly. Pale skin turned an ashy gray, eyes bugging out even further behind rounded spectacles, and his voice, if it were possible, squeaked and cracked its way into an octave dogs were sure to hear five miles off.

“What is _she_ doing here?!”

Martha decided she didn’t much like Nardole.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that we end our 1969 part of the adventure, with the Doctor being a skeeve that means well. Still working my way toward the finish, probably 2 more chapters to go.

The biscuits were almost gone, Martha’s teacup was down to the last sip, and the Doctor and Nardole had been arguing for the past five minutes.

Martha bore the noise with patience long-earned as the family go-between during her mum and dad’s infamous clashes. As long as it wasn’t directed _at_ her, she had no business butting in -- and yet, it was _about_ her, and the Doctor was properly _cross._

A part of Martha quietly basked in the support. The rest of her stayed small, and quiet and sharp, trying not to listen -- difficult to do, when she was certain their volume had drawn people in the corridor to eavesdrop.

“No, no, no, sir! This is, this is _unacceptable_ \--”

“It’s not like I _planned_ for this, you know, there’s this funny thing called _free will--_ ”

“But she needs to _leave,_ she can’t be here at _all_ ; you _know_ who’ll come _looking._ We have a _responsibility_ to _\--_

“Nardole!”

The cyborg jumped with a strangled squeak at the Doctor’s tone, or maybe it was the eyebrows. The Time Lord continued, angrily, “Shut up a minute. I know what’s at stake. I know how this goes. You don’t need to be _reminding me_ at every turn.”

Nardole’s expression went from alarm to consternation rather quickly. “Except I kinda _do_ , you know - it’s the rules _I_ was given, and you _know_ by who.”

“You’re not my minder, Nardole, no matter how much my-” the Doctor glanced at Martha, who straightened in her chair, sensing a change in the making. He seemed to think better of what he’d been about to say, and snapped back to glare at Nardole. “Go and check the systems. Make sure the filter extensions are still operating at peak.”

Nardole’s eyes narrowed even further, panic receding to be replaced by suspicion. “You don’t need me to check the filter extensions. You did a diagnostic just last week. You just want me out of the way while you do something I don’t approve of.”

“Bright boy,” the Doctor said with heavy sarcasm, trying to shoo the short man along. “You found me out; I’m plotting a field trip for my next class. We’re taking a trip to the Cretaceous. I’d invite you along, but it’d be too tempting to feed you to a Tarbosaurus.”

The short man dug his heels in and refused to be budged. “I have to object to this, sir, you are not supposed to be leaving the planet.”

“Technically, I wouldn’t be,” was the Doctor’s glib response. “I wouldn’t even need to change the spatial-positioning coordinates.”

“ _Technically,_ ” Nardole shot back, “it counts. No TARDIS trips, no way, no how.”

“ _Now_ , Nardole!” The Doctor’s bark was definitely impressive. Nardole turned a funny colour and hesitated, before swiftly unlocking the door and peering left and right into the hall. Coast clear, he fled.

 

The Doctor threw the deadbolt on the door with visceral satisfaction, before his shoulders slumped. Not by much, but it was enough to set warning bells, and Martha cleared her throat gently.

“Maybe he’s right? I mean, if I know you,” and that was a surreal sentence, “I mean, past-you, my you --” Not getting any better. Still, the Doctor’s expression when he turned to look at her was sympathetically amused. Martha grunted. “You know what I mean.”

“You’re not supposed to cross timelines, right? Whatever _you’re_ doing here -- and I _don’t_ want to know -- the Doctor’s gonna either sniff it out or tear it down looking for me, eventually. And,” she admitted, ducking her head, the guilt from earlier rearing again to life, “I should...probably get back and apologise. I kinda...shouted at him earlier. You.” She paused, and shook her head with an ice-cream-headache grimace. “Geez. How do you keep _track_?”

“Flipcharts and slides,” the Doctor said, flippantly, crossing the room to the big bay windows and peering at something across the grounds. “You think that’s bad, wait until gender gets brought into it.”

Wait, what?

“Wait, _what_?” Martha echoed her own double-take, but the Doctor was staring out the window, lips pursed with discontent.

“I see your Doctor. And he’s heading this way. Looks like our time is up, Martha Jones.” He turned away from the window, turned that heavy stare on Martha’s personage, and...stopped.

Martha stilled beneath the weight of his gaze. There were worlds of melancholy in those grey eyes, hangdog and full of regret; from the way his arms hung stiff at his sides, the slump of his shoulders, the way his face changed as if bracing against what was to come. In that moment, he was every patient’s family Martha had ever watched receive bad news -- and her own heart grew heavy.

“Doctor?” Hesitant. “What is it?”

“Oh, Martha,” he sighed softly, Scots’ accent a gentle burr. “I’m so sorry.”

A frown. “What for?”

“For what I have to do.” He smiled slightly. “Seeing you today was a light in the darkness.” The smile fell. “But I can’t let you remember this.”

Shock jolted her back. “What? _Why?_ ”

“Because Time Lords are touch-telepathic.” His words lay heavy, his face looking every one of the thousands of years he’d lived. “Listen to me, Martha. It’s imperative that what I am doing here isn’t discovered before its time, but _especially_ not by my younger selves.”

Martha’s blood chilled.

“If you go back to your Doctor, and he reads it off you -- even unintentionally -- it could be disastrous.”

“Okay, I don’t know if you _remember_ yourself,” Martha countered, “but if your Time Lordy mind-reading was all-powerful I’m pretty sure you would’ve gotten a clue after we spent the night together at the Globe.” A beat, and Martha’s cheeks flamed as ration caught up to her tongue. It drew a bark of laughter from the Doctor, uncomfortable and wry.

“What makes you think I didn’t know? Silly humans and their hormones. I’ve learned to tune you out. But this is more than just gleaning a crush from an overactive imagination, Martha,” The Doctor stressed. “This is something he would not _want_ to ignore, if he found it. Moreso, if...someone else, someone in your future, manages to do the same -- I can’t take the risk.”

“Warn me, then, I’ll stay far away from whoever it is,” Martha reasoned, but the Doctor only grinned, tight and rueful.

“Would that it be that easy. But that falls back to those thousand regrets. I can’t change the timeline, Martha. Not for you, not for me.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Please, Martha. Don’t fight me on this.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, unbidden.

“You promised,” she insisted, voice cracking. “You promised you’d tell me about this in the future. I’d better see you again, mister, or else.”

His thumb brushed away the moisture and his grey head dipped in a solemn nod. “I promise, Martha Jones, I will see you again. Even if it takes me another two thousand years.”

“Then do it,” Martha said, steeling herself toward the decision. “And do it quick. I don’t think past-you will be waiting much longer for me to get back.”

“Quick as a Gallifreyan jackalope,” the Doctor vowed, and his fingers brushed her temples.

Martha fell into memories.

 

 _Time and Shakespeare witches curse and_  
_Relatives mom dad Tish polarity reverse bells ringing and_  
_Dimensions angels watch the faces claws teeth don’t blink in_  
_Space and suns burning hot race the corridor solve the locks,_  
_No, reverse, time unravels, find the center study hard remember the_  
_Anger guilt storming off hug the corners Billy’s giving away secrets and  
_ _Grey hair storm eyes velvet blue tea and biscuits and sorrow and_ **_Life_ ** _._

 

 _I can’t leave your memories of this moment, not entirely,_ the Doctor’s voice whispered in her mind, a rock amid the sea that churned around her, _and I can’t change the timeline to come; it’s too complex to unravel without destroying the universe. But I can ease your burden, Martha Jones, and pray it’s enough. And someday, you’ll remember this moment, and I hope you can forgive an old man’s foolishness._

 _Forgive what,_ Martha wanted to ask, but her thoughts were growing fuzzy, like drifting awake from a pleasant dream. Her eyes threatened to close, and she swayed on her feet.

With a jolt of alarm that she would fall, she snapped back to alertness.

 

An older, curly-haired man with truly impressive eyebrows was staring at her in concern, lowering his hands to his sides.

 

“Are you alright, ma’am?” he asked, in a rough Scot’s accent.

“Yes...Yes. Um,” Martha hesitated, looking around. For a moment, she had no idea of where or how she was standing before him -- but the more she thought about it, the more she remembered wandering in here, completely lost in the rabbits warren of the campus halls. “Sorry! I must’ve gotten turned around. This isn’t the registrar’s office?”

“No,” he said, just as hesitant. “This is my office. Professor Foreman, languages.” He outstretched a hand. She shook it, feeling as though she were on autopilot. “The registrar is down the corridor, five doors and on the left. Easy mistake.”

“Right, down five doors. I remember. Thank you, Professor Foreman.” She smiled at him, pleased to meet someone who hadn’t automatically sneered at her for her race like the customers at her temporary employment. She glanced at her watch, and blinked in surprise; where _did_ the time go? “Oh! It was a pleasure to meet you, Professor! I’ve got to go or I’ll be late.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Professor Foreman agreed, sounding almost sad. He held the door for her in a gallant gesture of chivalry. Martha nodded thanks as she hurried out, hoping her unintended length of absence hadn’t worried Billy, or upset the Doctor.

A pang of guilt squeezed her chest at the thought of the latter. She should probably apologise. After she sorted out the registration for Billy’s integration.

Doors down the hall, one, two, three, four -- she poked her head into the last on the left and smiled at the receptionist. “Hello! Registration? Fabulous!”

 

The Doctor watched her go, leaning on the frame until Martha’s presence had receded from sight and from mind, the last whispers of the memory-wipe connection fading with distance. He stood there, until Nardole’s heavy tread approached him from behind, the cyborg’s expression one of sympathy.

“It was for the best, you know,” his companion-in-exile said, hesitant. “If she’d remembered...if the Master read--”

The Doctor’s shoulders tensed. With a burst of motion, he swung the door shut with a sharp bang, cutting Nardole off with a startled squeak. He stalked past the cyborg, nearly clipping Nardole in the shoulder. Frustration and anger and regret coiled around the Time Lord as he collapsed into the chair at his desk, yanking forward the papers to grade. One red mark, then two, then three, passed in silence that burned with frustration.

Nardole watched, but with no further input incoming, he sighed softly, and made to leave the Doctor to his sulking.

“...I know,” came the soft remark, as the cyborg reached the doorframe. Nardole looked back at the Doctor, still bent over papers, his pen now still and lax between limp fingers. Nardole inhaled quietly through his nose.

“...Doesn’t make it any easier,” he offered quietly.

The Doctor’s head bowed. “No, it doesn’t.” He dropped his pen to the desk and slumped back in his chair, running hands over his face, and his eyes fell to rest on the pictures that graced his desk. “It never does.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rawr braindeath delays. And so close to the end too.

_2018_

The lecture hall emptied of undergrads like the slow drain of a clogged tap, students jostling their way up and out of the room amid the sounds of backpacks clinking and conversations renewed. A few stragglers clung to their seating, in no rush to reach their next class. Martha and Mickey were of this denomination, though it was more shock that kept them in their spots.

Martha’s seatmate gave them a sunny smile as she collected her bag. “It was good meeting you, yeah? Hope you liked the lecture! I gotta meet my tutor, he’s super strict about being on time.”

“No, yeah, it was good to meet you too,” Martha said, distracted, and only after the younger woman had left out the upper door did she realise she’d never caught her name. “Damn.”

Mickey glanced up from the sensor he’d been fiddling with. “What’s up?”

“Just realised I forgot my manners in 1969.” Martha snorted. “Along with my senses. I can’t believe the Doctor brainwashed me.”

“He did it for Donna,” Mickey pointed out, and Martha grimaced. They all knew about Donna. But Donna’s case had been one of life and death; what _secret_ could the Doctor be guarding that was as volatile as to wipe all memory of its existance?

Or was Martha just lucky? Maybe others had stumbled on the Doctor in their own, proper time streams, and kept their memories.

“You’ve never visited St. Lukes before, right?”

Mickey gave a short laugh. “Posh place like this for a council kid like me? No way no how.” And was it petty that Martha felt better about that? Probably. The woman sighed and brushed her braids over her shoulder, getting to her feet.

“Come on, let’s find Himself and get some answers.” Because the Doctor had vanished from the podium during the exodus of students, probably through the door at the base of the stairs.

“You know, I think I recognise these readings, but I can’t put my finger on what...” Mickey muttered, as he led the way out. Martha paused at the door to look back at the chalkboard. The anagram of TARDIS stood out starkly against the black. Encouragement, or mocking?

Martha flinched and jogged to catch up to Mickey.

 

The halls of St. Lukes had gained a few coats of paint since 1969, but they still left an eerie familiarity behind as Martha traced a path she hadn’t walked for 49 years. The room she sought was still three doors down on the left, wood faded and nicked by time. The space for the plaque on the door was mildly tarnished around the edges, but the plaque itself was new. It still identified the occupant as ‘Doctor Song, PHD’, only this one just had the word ‘Physics’ alongside. The sight made her pause and a soft laugh escaped.

“Bet he was pleased they took the ‘theoretical’ out,” she explained to Mickey, and then rapped three times on the door.

Never four.

On the third, the door swung open.

The portly, bald little man behind it was not the Doctor.

He squinted through small, smudged spectacles, and then his eyes blew wide. Martha felt her lips curl into a grin despite herself.

“Hello _Nardole_.”

“Office hours are from 2 to 4 on weekends only,” he told her flatly. “Come back at the stroke of never.”

“I was promised tea,” Martha replied blithely, and at her side, Mickey snorted. The cyborg pursed his lips, ready with a retort.

“Nardole!”

The sharp command in familiar Scot’s cadence caused the cyborg to sigh heavily. He widened the door, slumping out of the way with extreme reluctance, and glowered at the two humans as they stepped through.

To their confusion, there was another familiar face waiting for them, and not one Martha expected. The young woman from before, the one from the lecture hall, blinked at them in surprise from where she perched on the edge of the center desk, stilling the child-like swing of her legs.

 To her left, next to a blackboard that leaned a bit precariously against the side of the TARDIS, the Doctor dropped the piece of chalk he held in a tray and dusted his hands, spinning to face them.

At sight of Martha and Mickey, a beaming grin overtook the Time Lord’s lined face and he spread his arms wide. With the ruffles at his wrists and the flare of crimson in his velvet coat, he looked like he could’ve come from pub night with Shakespere, straight to the Globe for a performance.

“The esteemed Doctor Jones! And Mickey the tin dog! Must be Christmas.” He clapped his hands together and lifted those ridiculous eyebrows. “Did you enjoy my lecture? Must have, you were spellbound as mice up there.”

As Mickey rolled his eyes, Martha put her hands on her hips and glared. The effect was rather ruined by the grin on her own face.

“I’m _still_ rubbish at anagrams, you know.”

“Ah, but anagrams by nature require you to _think,_ ” the Doctor pointed out gleefully. “Else they wouldn’t be puzzles. And what good’s a lock and key if it’s so easily picked?”

“Yeah, about that-” She stalked up to the Time Lord, jabbing a finger between his hearts. “You owe me a damn good explanation after 49 years for why you felt brainwashing me stupid was a good idea. You’re lucky I don’t call my mum and let her smack some sense into you for old times sake.”

“I do, don’t I,” the Doctor agreed, rather nervously. “I don’t think there’s call to bring Francine into this.” The woman on the desk gave an incredulous cough.

“You mean I’m not the only one he threatened to do that to? Good to know you’re just an idiot,” she directed at the Doctor, who pulled a disgruntled face at her.

“I was trying to protect the causality of the timelines, Potts, excuse me if I picked the wrong sort of method to go about it. And Martha should have all her memories back now. The triggers worked, yes?“ He peered at her below furrowed brows. “Feeling strange? Or, stranger than is usual for you humans?”

It was hard to stay mad at him, even after everything. “I suppose I’ll let it slide, if you give me a hug and introduce us properly.” Martha smiled at the woman who’d been eyeing them with intense interest. “Hello again.”

“Hullo,” the woman said, bemused. “Didn’t know you knew the professor here.”

“Yes, yes,” the Doctor fussed, and rolled his eyes, opening his arms to give Martha a brief but sincere hug. “After all the work I put into luring you here, I think I deserve a tad more consideration on that slap. Bill, Martha. Martha, Bill. And that’s Mickey Jones.”

“It’s Smith, actually,” Mickey said with a smirk, and raised a fist, which the Doctor obediently knocked with exagurated gravitas. “Heya boss.”

“It’s Jones,” the Doctor told him. “That’s how it works.”

“What? No it isn-”

“Did you just fist-bump?” Bill interrupted, giving the Doctor a fish-eye of amazement. “In an appropriate context?” The Doctor made a face at her. She grinned back. “I’m so proud.”

“Oh, ha ha,” the Doctor mocked, deadpan. “Three thousand years give or take a million, I have picked up a few things.” He clapped his hands, sending up a small puff of chalk dust, and, startled, examined his palms before wiping them clean on his trousers. The display had Martha checking her own jacket surreptitiously, and sure enough, he’d left dusty white fingerprints on her jacket. She stifled a sigh, while Mickey meanwhile caught up to the rapidfire chaos and spluttered.

“Hold a mo, did you say you _lured us here?_ ” He gave Martha’s arm a nudge and gestured at the Time Lord, giving his wife a ‘I-knew-it-and-can-you-believe-this’ face. It was a face he often wore when the Doctor was involved. “I _knew_ those readings were familiar.”

“I might have turned down the dampers on the TARDIS emission frequencies,” the Doctor confessed with a laconic shrug. “A few engine cycles here and there and I knew someone would come round to investigate.”

“And you picked now of all times, because you knew UNIT was tied up,” Martha guessed, correctly if the sly look on the Time Lord’s face was anything to go by. “Let me guess: you also sent Sarah Jane plane tickets to New Zealand?”

A sharp clatter of china turned all heads to Nardole, who had set a tea tray down on the desk with a bit too much force and was glaring at the Doctor, pale complexion flushed red with frustration. “Sir,” he hissed, “this is in _breach of protocol--_ ”

“Oh good, you brought the tea,” the Doctor said, patting the steaming cyborg on the shoulder brusquely. “And I think I’ve still got those cardboard biscuits here someplace. You know, they kinda grow on you after a few centuries?”


End file.
